Several companies have signed on to the standards spelled out in the Accord on Fire and Building Safety, a legally binding deal between manufacturers and Bangladeshi trade unions that requires firms to help fund workplace safety initiatives and mandates that the factories be open to independent inspections.

Thirteen other clothing manufacturers with licenses to produce the Rutgers-emblazoned caps and shirts have until July 1 to sign up or lose those licenses.

The move follows agitation by Rutgers United Students Against Sweatshops and other student groups in the wake of a May factory collapse that crushed at least 1,100 Bangladeshi workers to death, injuring and maiming thousands more.

“Colleges and universities have a moral obligation to do everything within their power to help eliminate sweatshop conditions around the world. This accord is the latest milestone in these important efforts and requiring our licensees to abide by the accord is simply the right thing to do,” says Rutgers President Robert Barchi.

The stand against sweatshops echoes Rutgers protest of South Africa’s apartheid government policies in the mid-‘80s when the school’s board of governors divested its investment in companies with operations in that country.

That action by Rutgers — as well as the state of New Jersey, other governments and institutions – applied the economic pressure that helped bring about a moral imperative.
The dangerous incarceration of sweatshops is just as morally compelling, a fact clearly recognized by the students who helped nudge their elders into action.

It calls discomfiting attention to an issue many consumers would prefer not to consider as they demand ever cheaper goods without ever knowing the price paid for that economy.

Just about 100 years ago, the Triangle shirt factory went up in flames in New York’s Greenwich Village, killing 143 garment workers. Young immigrant girls who toiled more than 50 hours a week for less than $10 jumped to their deaths to escape the flames.

The unsafe conditions that contributed to the fire and the death toll convinced lawmakers to legislate safety standards. And the deadly fire was a rallying point for union organizers who fought for better working conditions in New York’s sweatshops.

The efforts of Rutgers and the other schools to force clothing companies to improve working conditions in those Bangladeshi factories won’t change the world.

But they will change a little part of it, perhaps preventing needless death and injury.